Thursday, January 31, 2013

After unintentionally shooting and killing friend, teen panics and tries to dismember body

19-year-old Jeremy McVicker and 19-year-old Dylan Heinen, of Spokane, Washington, were hanging out with friends at McVicker's house. According to another friend who was there, McVicker pulled out a 9mm handgun and began playing with it.
"He was loading, unloading and racking the slide on the gun repeatedly," the friend told police. Heinen said something like "why don't you just pull the trigger?" so McVicker pointed the gun at Heinen and thinking the gun was unloaded, pulled the trigger. Heinen was shot in the head and died instantly.
After the shooting, McVicker panicked. He got a hatchet and tried to dismember Heinen's body. According to the autopsy, McVicker struck Heinen's body 40 times in the back of the head and neck attempting to decapitate him.
Court records note, "after striking Heinen repeatedly with the hatchet, McVicker said he became sickened and stopped."
"It's such a foreign concept to us," said a Spokane police officer. "Not only to accidentally shoot your friend, but then go through the exercise of dismembering them with a hatchet. It's very tragic."
McVicker has been charged with first-degree manslaughter. His bail has been set at $1,000,000. Police said alcohol was involved in the incident.

Ohh Shoot highlights unintentional shootings. Some might refer to these as accidental shootings, but accident is too often interpreted as unavoidable. The shootings on this blog did not have to happen. Safe storage, better gun design, gun safety training are just some of the measures that could have prevented these tragedies.